* Not actually a shop

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Konno Ices Own Birthday Cake

Japan slayed their South Korean demons and booked their spot in the Final of the 2011 Asian Cup in the early hours of this morning, winning a thrilling match 3-0 on penalties after the teams drew 1-1 after 90 minutes and 2-2 following extra time. Both teams took the lead in the 120 minutes (South Korea in the first half, Japan in the first half of extra time) but were unable to hang on, with the Koreans taking the game to penalties with their equalizer following a frantic scramble in the Japanese penalty area in the last minute of extra time.

Fittingly, a first win over their rivals from across the Japan Sea in almost six years was sealed by FC Tokyo's-own Yasuyuki Konno - on his 28th birthday - who fired home Japan's fourth spot kick to send the Japanese players and supporters into raptures, and the Koreans into floods of tears. The victory set up a showdown with Australia, after the Socceroos battered Uzbekistan 6-0 in the later semi final.

As an Australian, I am now contractually obliged to support my homeland in the Final, but there were plenty of talking points from the Japan game for an FC Tokyo blogger to address, so, while Eiji Kawashima will rightly be the subject of countless column inches for his heroics in the shootout, and Keisuke Honda and Shinji Kagawa are the most high-profile Japanese players of the moment, you can go elsewhere if you want to read about them. Here it's going to be all about Gasmen present and past: Konno and Yuto Nagatomo; and they were involved in most of the big incidents throughout the game (I could talk about Masahiko Inoha too, but I don't like him, so I won't).

Monday, January 24, 2011

Three Down, One Up?

All clubs that get relegated say their goal is to go straight back up the season after, but in recent J.League history that's been easier said than done. Since J1's expansion to 18 teams in 2005, only once has more than one relegated team bounced straight back into J1 - 2006, when Kashiwa and Kobe did the trick. As you can see from my bog-standard cutting and pasting, the average is one team a season going back up ("chart" shows the three - or two - teams relegated the season before and their position their first season back in J2 - green = promoted).
2006

Kashiwa 2nd
 The Spews 7th
 Kobe 3rd
2007

Fukuoka 7th
 C. Osaka 5th
 Kyoto 3rd
2008

 Kofu 7th
 Yokohama F.C. 10th
2009

 *
 The Spews 7th
 Sapporo 6th
2010

Kashiwa 1st
 Oita 15th
 Chiba 4th
*In '08, J1's 3rd-from-bottom Iwata won the promotion/relegation playoff so only two were relegated.

Last year Kashiwa kept the average up by winning the league, Chiba were in the hunt for promotion all season but faded from September on and ended-up fourth, but Oita were a disaster, just two years on from finishing fourth in J1 and winning the Nabisco, they finished 15th in J2. "Doing an Oita" seemed nigh-on impossible for The Gasmen entering 2010, having progressed steadily and finished sixth and fifth the previous two years, but whether it was the Nabisco Cup Winners Jinx or not (it wasn't, we were shite), we met the same fate as them the season after winning the Cup (but I'll say it again - be careful Iwata!).

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

On the Gas is live - be afraid, Tatsuya, be very afraid!

With just over six weeks left until the new J.League season starts on March 5th (what exactly is a "Sagan" or a "Tosu" anyway?!), I'd like to welcome you to On the Gas - my new blog on all things FC Tokyo. Here you'll find match reports, analysis and opinion on the Gasmen - the capital's best and most well-supported football club.... although that's about as much positivity as I can muster at the moment - we did get relegated last year, after all. This blog will operate with a no holds barred and no bleep-button policy - let me apologise in advance for the foul language - but we only do it coz we care.

"We" are myself and tokyo bairn, season ticket holders for three years now (counting 2011), and regular attendees at Aji Sta for over five years. I'm an Aussie, he's a Scot, and we have very strong opinions about our club and the players who play for "us." On the Gas came to me when I was knocking around names for this new blog, and, as with all good things, it has a nice double meaning: FC Tokyo were originally called Tokyo Gas FC and are nicknamed the Gasmen, so we'll be writing on/about the Gas(men); and our old mate Brendan Hughes used to call going out for a drink going out "on the gas" - a large part of the matchday experience for tokyo bairn and myself involves that type of gas!

From midway through the 2010 season I was posting match reports and analysis on Last Man Standing, and you can still visit there to access all of those posts (if you want to put yourself through that torture again, or relive the torture I went through), but I've decided to return that blog to its original purpose - L.M.S. Fantasy Podcasts.

Here, its FC Tokyo match reports, analysis, opinion, and debate all the way, given to you straight. Please comment on posts if you like what you read, comment if you disagree, comment if you want to tell me I'm a negative wanker, it's OK, I can take it (although I might get a little upset if I get too many negative wanker ones)!

I've started things off by importing my Nine Months of Hell series from the L.M.S. blog, a fairly lengthy three-parter covering (Part 1) the numbers that mattered and (Part 2) the players that got us relegated in 2010, before (Part 3) running the rule over our off-season transfer activity and a look at what we can expect in our first J2 season since our inaugural J.League season, 1999.

And what an interesting season it should be, too. There should be plenty of goals flying in at Aji Sta - you never know, Tatsuya might even get one - and we'll be there for as much of it as we can stomach!

FC Tokyo 2010 - Nine Months of Hell Part 3

Konno will go. Oguro's on loan so he's gone, Gonda might be off. The big Qs are Yonemoto, Hirayama, Casual & Ishikawa. #FCTokyo
5 Dec via ÜberTwitter
 

I'm posting this a lot later than originally intended, but a relaxing week back home in Australia, and almost two more in Japan have me well and truly calmed down, and dealing with the reality that FC Tokyo will play in J2 in 2011. So here, in Part 3 of my wrap-up of the 2010 season, we'll look at what lies ahead as we get set for our first season in the second division since 1999.

The goals are simple: win the two derbies against The Spews; and finish in the top three, which will see us return to J1 in '12. The latter looks very attainable the way our squad is shaping up, but there should be at least five teams battling for promotion, and we'll be a big scalp for the minnows, so it won't be as easy as some fans seem to think. Anyway, I'm gunna stay positive (I promise!), so lets do this in two sections:

Section One - The Squad
In the immediate aftermath of our relegation, I feared we'd lose up to eight of our best players, as might be expected with dropping down a division, and with several of our squad in the National Team frame. In particular, as you've already seen from my tweet above (follow me @benjmaxwell), I thought it was dead certain that Yasuyuki Konno would be off, as he's a permanent fixture in Japan squads, while there had to be major doubts over the futures of Shuichi Gonda, Takuji Yonemoto and Naohiro Ishikawa, as Gonda and Yonemoto are sure to be involved in the national set-up in the near future and would, I thought, want to advance their claims in the top flight, and Ishikawa, despite his poor 2010 season, would still hope to be involved in Alberto Zaccheroni's plans with a strong bounce-back season somewhere in J1 in '11.

On top of those four, I thought players like Yohei Kajiyama, Naotake Hanyu and Masato Morishige (two relegations in two seasons, nice going buddy, maybe he should go join Urawa) might feel they were "better" than J2 (and would all be on decent money that we might not now be able to afford), while it was my fervent wish that Tatsuya would finally rack off, and there are plenty of Tokyo fans who want shot of Sota Hirayama - despite his strong finish to 2010. If Gonda were to stay, that would surely mean the end of Hitoshi Shiota, as we wouldn't need two top-level keepers in J2, and lastly, relegation was always going to mean the end of hired gun Masashi Oguro's time with us.

FC Tokyo 2010 - Nine Months of Hell Part 2

FC Tokyo are relegated. They should all be lined up against a wall, and shot. I am disgusted. #weakc++ts #FCTokyo
5:24 PM Dec 4th via ÜberTwitter

*WARNING* This is an extremely long post. Feel free to come and go, read it in bits and pieces, if it's length, and negative tone, prove too much for one sitting.

This is Part 2 of the grieving/healing process I need to go through as I, and all Tokyo supporters, mourn the end of our 11 year run in J1. Part 1 was all about the numbers. Here, its time to vent hard at the 24 players who took the field in an FC Tokyo shirt in the 2010 J1 season. With very few exceptions, the squad vastly under-performed, and while injuries can be used as excuses in a few cases, to say they are even slightly to blame for our relegation is simply bollocks. That is because, even though we had quite a lot of player turnover, and failed, YET AGAIN, to fill our allowed quota of foreign players, we thought this was one of our best squads ever, loaded with homegrown talent.

At the end of 2009, we bade farewell to club legends Ryuji Fujiyama and Satoru Asari, legendary eater Yusuke Kondo - officially the fattest man ever to play in the J.League*, defenders Bruno Quadros, Teruyuki Moniwa and Hideki Sahara; and midfielder Jo Kanazawa. Of those seven, only Bruno (23 games) and possibly Fat Man (12 games, 6 starts) were important on-field members of the squad in '09 (the other 5 made 29 appearances between them), but would the veteran trio of Fujiyama, Asari and Moniwa be missed more behind the scenes, at training and in the clubhouse, than on the field?

Nah, we'll be fine, we thought, as we brought in (with descriptions from the club website): Masato Morishige - "Top-class defender. Strong in one-on-one situations, powerful header and able to build play;" Ricardinho (didn't come with much of a C.V., but hey, he's Brazilian!) - "Lightning fast striker with dazzling dribbling ability and thunderous shot with both feet;" Toshihiro Matsushita - "Dynamic attacking midfielder. A major threat with free kicks;" Kim Young Gwon (South Korean Under 21 international) - "Aerially dominant defender with accurate left-footed passing ability;" and our prolific youth team striker Kentaro Shigematsu - "Physically strong centre forward with sound technique under pressure. Clinical finisher." We weren't to know it at the time, but those descriptions would turn out to be utter bollocks.....

FC Tokyo 2010 - Nine Months of Hell Part 1

Same XI for us to start 2nd half. This is like watching a train wreck in slow motion.... #FCTokyo
4:33 PM Dec 4th via ÜberTwitter

My tweet at the start of the second half of the final game of the season at Kyoto.... Sums up the season as a whole pretty well though.

This is the first of three parts I will post over the next week or two covering FC Tokyo's 2010 season, from the first game win over Yokohama through to the darkest day in our club's history, December 4th, 2010, the day we plummeted through the trapdoor into J2, our first ever relegation. Our eleven year run in J1 is over, we've gone from legitimate title contender in '08 & '09 (and Nabisco Cup Champions '09) to relegated laughing-stock in 2010, and we are a J2 team for the first time since our inaugural year as a J.League club, 1999.

Here I'll go through the season in numbers, including how we fared differently (ie. worse) than in '09, and in later installments I'll go through the squad player-by-player before finishing with a look at who'll still be around and how we'll fare in J2 in 2011. Some of you will no doubt want to draw a line under what went on this season, put it behind you and try to forget it, but I'm still processing it all so I'm attempting this as therapy, hoping that at the end of Part 3 I'll finally have "closure" as they say in psychology circles. A mixture of stats, analysis, ranting and foul language, here is my take on FC Tokyo's 2010 season: